Many businesses and organizations require or desire standardization with respect to their products and/or services. The need or desire for standardization may be driven by, for example, a business model embodied in a corporation's strategy or policy, contracts or agreements with government entities or other businesses, laws relating to the business, and the like. For example, in the telecommunication industry the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) share responsibility for maintaining and expanding the public switched telephone network (PSTN). In order to ensure that a new phone installed in a home in Bangor, Me. functions properly when placing a call to a 30-year-old phone in Los Angeles, Calif., the phone and any switching locations servicing the phone must be installed according to network-wide standards. Further, laws such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 require a certain degree of network standardization so that Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) are able to use and maintain the network infrastructure installed by the RBOCs. However, a number of factors may complicate efforts to achieve standardization.
Once again using the example of the telecommunications industry, the shear size of the PSTN, the number of different possible installations, and the myriad factors that drive the need for standardization, produce literally millions of permutations for a telephone or central office installation. Add to this the number of different telecommunication equipment manufacturers competing to provide hardware, and the problem of maintaining standardization becomes seemingly unmanageable.
In the past, some companies have relied on flow charts to attempt to guide designers. The flowcharts may have been created by business policy implementers based on changes or additions to the businesses policy, new laws affecting the company's business, and/or the like. However, traditional flowcharts have numerous limitations. For example, a complex flowchart may guide the user through several branching points, each having multiple options, with no safeguard to ensure the user returns to complete all paths from the branching points. Further, traditional flowcharts do not necessarily record the decision process that results in a particular solution, a feature that would be beneficial to businesses that may be called to demonstrate compliance with laws or regulations.
Thus, for the foregoing reasons, a decision tool is needed that incorporates evolving requirements, standardizes a business' products and/or services, and records the steps in a decision process, among other things.